Tackling school food

Most of our kids are heading back to school and for those of you tackling it for the first time, it can be a little daunting as you consider “how will my child take their enzymes?” or “how will i make sure they get enough calories throughout the school day?”. In the early days of pre-school and primary school (Up to about grade 1) we used to stick stickers on the inside of the lunchbox telling him how many enzymes were for each item of food and put the corresponding amount into one of those little tupperware containers (tupperware keyrings we bought off e-bay).

The main reason we put the sticker on was to keep trying to teach him how many enzymes were needed for each item of food. Now he’s in grade # 2 we just put the total amount of enzymes into the container with no stickers. We do this for a couple of reasons – he’s a little more private now as he gets older and doesn’t want a whole bunch of stickers on his lunchbox which is fair enough but also, he’s just busy. Like most eight year old boys he’s on the go and he just sculls the enzymes, grabs his lunch and stuffs as much as he can down before he grabs his treats and runs outside. So we have to work with that.

When it comes to lunches, many of us are creatures of habit as we throw stuff in the lunchboxes each morning. Thinking about adding extra fat or salted foods is one more thing to think about so it often helps to have a plan. I still try and offer a reasonable amount of variety so that I tempt him with at least a few things that he might feel like eating.

Our plan usually is:

For Morning tea

1 x packet salty chips

1 x high fat snack like a cookie with fruit & choc bits or banana bread or celery with fatty cheese and dates

Plus

1 x serve vegetable sticks (sip & crunch)

For Lunch

1 small portion of fruit

1 small portion of vegetable snacks like cherry tomatoes, carrots or mini cucumbers